Boston professor's guide to forgotten Black history sites in city
While Bostonians are accustomed to walking past pieces of American history, the city's rich Black history is often not obvious unless you know what you're looking for.
As Black History Month comes to an end, here are three sites you might've overlooked:
The grave of Crispus Attucks
At the Granary Burying Ground, along the Freedom Trail, Crispus Attucks' name appears on a stone marking a shared grave. He was a former Framingham slave of black and Native American descent who stood up to British soldiers and went down in history as a patriot who helped to spur the American Revolution.
"He and a group of fellow Bostonians staged a protest. They confronted British soldiers and the soldiers shot into the crowd. Crispus Attucks was the first to die at the massacre," said Dr. Kerri Greenidge, a Mellon Assistant Professor at Tufts University, who studies Black history in Boston.
The former site of the Tremont Theatre
Now the present-day site of the AMC Theater near Boston Common, Greenidge says the theater was once a focal point of protests against racism and racial violence.
"In 1915 with the release of D.W. Griffith's film, 'Birth of a Nation,' this theater became the site of massive protests by the Black community against that film, which basically glorified the Ku Klux Klan and white violence against African Americans," she said.
Greenidge dug through historical archives to learn about the Tremont Theatre and notes that there's no marker or public acknowledgment about the history.
"We need some more commemoration of Blacks, Black stories here," Greenidge said.
That's why Greenidge wrote a book about Black newspaperman William Monroe Trotter, a Harvard graduate who fought against racism. The book, called "Black Radical," was published in 2019.
"(Trotter) petitioned the mayor of Boston, James Michael Curley, to outlaw the film. Curley was known to outlaw all sorts of films in Boston. 'Banned in Boston,' that's where that term comes from. But he refused to ban 'Birth of a Nation' and so the Black community staged a series of protests at the theater. They threw stuff at the screen so the movie couldn't be played," Greenidge said.
The African Meeting House
Beacon Hill was home to the Black community in 1806. At that time, Blacks built and owned the Joy Street African Meeting House, which is now part of the Black Heritage Trail.
"The roots of the Black church building — and a Black church building was a community building — particularly in the North is something that has its roots in the Boston community," Greenidge said.
The place is known as a church and one of the oldest museums, but it was also a school and much more.
"It was then used as a synagogue in the late 19th century, so it was a continually functioning church space from 1806 to roughly 1972," Greenidge said.